Zitat des Tages von Rosecrans Baldwin:
I actually don't think there is machismo in America, unless it's the cowboy type - the silent, smoking brooder.
If I see a roll of Bubble Tape, a bag of Haribo Gold-Bears or a pouch of green-apple Big League Chew, I'm eleven again.
Tintin comics evoke Bermuda, where my parents doled out comics for good behavior and my grandmother taught me how to shuffle cards.
In Europe, it's common to hear about young professionals living with their parents. With the continent's high rents and taxes and its population density, it makes sense.
I never had the idea of moving to Paris and becoming something. I liked the idea of living in Paris because it seemed to have so many parts of life I really enjoyed. The people there seemed to prize literature and art, food and drinking, a more hedonistic way of living.
Lunch is the best time of day to eat in Paris. Then you get to go walk it off afterwards.
Paris's neighborhoods, the arrondissements, are organized like a twist. They spiral from the river like toilet water flushing in reverse and erupting out of the bowl - a corkscrew or what have you, a flattened pig's tail, a whorling braid notched one to 20.
I think one of my favorite things about Paris is the ever-present, nonstop beauty of the city. So I would just walk as much as possible.
That's the thing: once it's in their hands, it's not my book anymore, it's theirs. I have no idea what happens when they start to digest it. So when someone writes me to explain how they read it, what it was like, what they enjoyed, there's a thrill. Writers who don't make their email addresses public are missing out on something wonderful.
I think the place we love the most is the Parc des Buttes Chaumont. It's in the 19th arrondissement. It's where I would go jogging and my wife, Rachel, and I would go for walks. It's appreciated by Parisians but it's not really known to tourists.
As a child, I was bonkers for Christmas. The entire month of December, I couldn't sleep at night from anticipation.
In our town, Halloween was terrifying and thrilling, and there was a whiff of homicide. We'd travel by foot in the dark for miles, collecting candy, watching out for adults who seemed too eager to give us treats.
When I went to Paris, I had a lot of ideas about it that were formed in the sort of ether that flows about if you watch too many recent Woody Allen movies or took French classes as a kid. I was certainly full of those.
To be human is to have a collection of memories that tells you who you are and how you got there.
When I was a kid, we didn't eat in restaurants much, but a good report card meant my sister or I could choose anyplace in town for a dinner out, and I always picked Benny's, a dive bar near the train station, because they had the best nachos around.
Loving relatives and home-cooked meals are solid levees against a recession.
Americans love popcorn, and their love doesn't quit.
My father-in-law has ear hair like a wolverine. It fans out from the auricles, wafting from the ridge lines like cilia, like gray feathered plumage.
I like to find music that shares a rhythm with the sentences I'm working on. And though I'll probably regret saying this, I think some songs actually don't sound too bad when they're played through lousy speakers.
My ambition was to be cosmopolitan. I grew up in the suburbs. I went to college in Maine. I had a dream in my head that if you wanted to be the most urbane, living-life-to-the-fullest kind of person, Paris was the place to be.
Venice, Italy, is one of my favorite cities, a place I've been lucky enough to visit twice.
In college, my wife did a study abroad in Nairobi, and I did the exact same program in Cape Town. For me, the experience of being in that other culture really set up a longing. When I'm traveling, things seem really sharp. You learn things ten times faster.
